magnolia06

The Dark Lord’s Daughter

Part the Sixth

Hermione Granger sat down at the library table as if she belonged there. 

Harry looked at her pile of books and then glanced at Magnolia, asking her with his eyes if she knew what was going on.  She shrugged her shoulders and then looked over at her cousin, Draco Malfoy, who was the one to speak,

“What are you doing here, Granger?” he spit out.  “If you hadn’t noticed, this is a Slytherin table.”

And it was.  Genevieve Selwyn, who was sitting next to Draco, was also there, and Theodore Nott was in the extra chair on Harry’s other side.  If Harry wasn’t very much mistaken, Draco and Genevieve would soon start going.  She did have golden hair after all and according to Magnolia, who was a great authority on everything Malfoy, Draco would only consider going with or marrying a girl with blonde hair.

“I am here to speak with Potter.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” he answered back, looking down at his essay for Sinistra.  “We’ve never even spoken before today.”

“We’ve spoken,” she argued, “that time at the Weasleys.”

Harry looked at her and thought about it.  He’d been to the Weasley home several times over the years.  Jonathan was in the same year as the Weasley twins and was particular friends with Fred Weasley.  Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were also in the Order of the Phoenix.

It was possible he spoke to Granger, but he honestly couldn’t remember.

Shrugging, he agreed, “Maybe.  Who’s to say?”

Granger huffed.  “I need to talk to you about your brother, Jonathan.”

“Half-brother,” Theodore supplied.  “They’re half-brothers.”

Harry looked up in thanks and locked eyes with his friend. 

Granger didn’t seem to care.  “Half-brother.  Whatever.  You grew up with him.  He’s dating Ginny Weasley even though she’s only a fourth year.”

Well, Harry had been right then.  A seventh year with a fourth year was a bit of a stretch, but maybe Ginny was fifteen like Magnolia was.  “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked.

Granger took a deep breath.  “She would make a horrible Mrs. Potter.”

At that, every single Slytherin stopped what they were doing and stared at her.  Granger seemed to shrink at the sudden attention.

“Ginny is nice and Quidditch mad, which is what Jonathan likes, and she’s Fred’s little sister.”  Hermione looked at him with brown eyes.

“All positives,” Harry agreed, not really caring.  He wondered if Marcus Flint would curse her over the summer like he had the Muggle Cheryl. 

“She also,” Magnolia noted, entering the conversation, “has ginger hair and looks passably like Mrs. Potter.  Some wizards like that.”

Harry screwed up his face and thought about it.  Weasleys did passably look like Lily Potter.  Their hair was ginger instead of auburn.  Their eyes were brown instead of green, but he could see it.  How distressing.  Harry couldn’t really judge, though.  His intended had the same exact eyes as his mother, given that they were cousins, although that is where the similarities ended.

“Well,” Granger stated carefully, pushing her bushy hair behind her right ear, “I am much more like Mrs. Potter than Ginny Weasley.  I’m a much better choice.”

The entire table went silent again and turned toward her.

Granger swallowed, but her eyes bored into Harry’s.  “I—I’m a Muggleborn.”

“That doesn’t help you here,” Harry told her right out.

“But it does help me with Jonathan.”

Harry supposed she was right.

“I’m top of my class.  I study.  I’m clever.  I have Mrs. Potter’s personality.”

“You don’t want Mrs. Potter’s personality,” Magnolia told Granger somewhat kindly.  “She treats pureblood children horribly.”

“Mudblood,” Draco scoffed under his breath.

Granger whipped her head over to him, but didn’t say anything.

“Do you really want Quidditch mad nieces and nephews who will know nothing but brute strength?  They’ll chase your children and beat them up like Jonathan used to beat you up.”  This all rushed out of Granger’s lips, her buck teeth clicking together.  “Don’t you want studiousness and reason and compassion?”

“Haven’t you noticed, Granger?” Theodore asked, “The tides have turned.”

“I have,” she agreed.  “I came to also ask you to stop.  Jonathan always had a sense of honor, a code of conduct.  You’re his brother—”

Theodore made a noise in the back of his throat.

“Half-brother,” Granger corrected.  “You have the same father.  You must have a sense of honor, too.  This has gone on long enough.”

Harry’s ocean blue eyes flashed.  “We have fifteen and a half years to catch up on before honor, as you call it, has been satisfied.  If you want us to curse Ginny Weasley, I’m sure that could be arranged, though that might make her sympathetic.”

“Not if we did to her what we did to Cheryl,” Draco suggested.  “That is, if you want your father’s blood to be diluted even more.”

Harry looked over at Granger thoughtfully.  “How badly do you want Jonathan?”

She seemed suddenly uncomfortable.  “What?”

“How badly?”

Magnolia and Draco exchanged a gleeful look.

“I might ask you to do favors for me,” Harry suggested to her, “if we do this.”

“Favors,” she checked.

“Nothing trying,” he assured her.  “Grabbing a letter, leaving something in his trunk, that sort of thing.”

Granger looked at him long and slowly and then nodded.  “Only if this comes off.”

He offered her his hand and she took it hesitantly.  They shook on it in a wizarding promise, and she left them to their table.  They all waited until she was well and truly gone.

“Zabini fancies the Weaslette,” Draco supplied as he leaned in.  “A well placed love potion would serve everyone’s ambitions.  I could get my hands on one.”

Genevieve looked up at him with wide golden eyes.  “You are truly scary sometimes, Draco,” she complimented with a small smile on her lips.  “Love potions are illegal.”

“Amortentia is illegal,” Magnolia corrected, “not the lesser potions.  If we feed it to her slowly, no one will notice.  She won’t notice.  Potter will think it’s nothing he can’t handle until, suddenly, he can’t handle it.”

“If Zabini really fancies Weaslette and it’s more than just a passing fancy, we should tell him,” Genevieve put in.  “It would be cruel to him otherwise.  We shouldn’t give him a taste and then tell him that he has to feed her a love potion the rest of their lives.”

Magnolia shifted in her chair and Harry turned to her, placing a hand on her arm to soothe her.  She seemed distressed at Genevieve’s comment.  Why would the idea of feeding someone a love potion be distressing to her, though?

“I’ll put it to Zabini,” Draco told her, “wizard to wizard.  If you could come, Potter.  You’d lend weight to the conversation.”

Harry looked up from Magnolia, his thumb still rubbing her arm, and his ocean blue eyes met Draco’s grey gaze.  He still was getting used to the fact that his voice was now powerful in Slytherin House.  “Of course,” he agreed.  “We should leave the ladies out of this, and Granger did come to me.”

Of course, Magnolia slipped into the fifth year’s boy dormitory that night, after Harry had gone down to get more parchment so he could write his mother.

“You must have wondered what was wrong this afternoon,” she murmured, frightening him as he had thought he was alone.  Her tie was loosened and her hair was perfectly in place, her eyes gazing up at the ceiling which showed the Black Lake.

“You seem disturbed at the entire plan,” Harry couldn’t help but notice.  This was a new side to Magnolia.  For once she wasn’t ordering him around or making decisions for him.  She actually appeared vulnerable.

“It’s Grandmother Merope,” she confessed, taking a seat on his bed and placing her face in her hands. 

Harry carefully sat down and carefully gave her space, giving her time to speak.  “What about Grandmother Merope?”

“She loved Grandfather Riddle.  But he hated her.”  She looked up from her hands to his blue eyes.  “He belittled her and brought woman around to torment her.  But she loved him.  You remember she didn’t have a wand.”

“You said,” Harry agreed carefully.  “Did she brew a love potion?”

“Yes,” Magnolia agreed.  “And it worked.  He loved her.  He brought her to Riddle House and they conceived Father—She thought with Father on the way, she didn’t need the love potion anymore.”

“Oh, Nola,” he sighed, thinking this could only end badly.  “What happened?”

“He cast her out.  Father was born on the streets of London and Grandmother Merope died from child labor.  She had so little natural magic, you see.  Father grew up in an orphanage knowing nothing of magic.  Grandfather never went looking for him—”

“But he must have come looking.  You live in Riddle House.”

“Father went looking instead,” Magnolia explained carefully, her breaths shallow.  “He—he killed Grandfather and his parents, made it look like the gardener did it.  He inherited the house as it was his by right.  He could prove he was a Riddle.”  She looked up into his eyes.  “Father was our age when it happened.  Fifteen.—Grandmother Merope lived in a cottage on the edge of the property.  It’s still there.  It’s a hovel.  Father doesn’t like me to go.”

“So it all started with a love potion.  Merope didn’t marry Morfin because she brewed a love potion.”

“Yes,” she agreed.  “They’re horrible things.”

Harry thought about this for a long moment.  He hadn’t realized the Dark Lord’s childhood had been so tragic.  Still, he took a breath: “Zabini will be well-informed.  If he wants Ginny to love him, we’ll make Ginny love him for the rest of his life.  If he wants Ginny for now, then he will have Ginny for now,” he promised.

Magnolia breathed through her nose and began to compose herself.  “Father doesn’t love Mama of course.  Grandfather Abraxas was his greatest friend.  They wanted nothing more than to join their houses.”

“But we will marry for love,” Harry promised her as he tried to convince himself that this could be the truth.  “It started out as dynasty, but it’s moving away from that.”

“Yes,” she agreed, tangling their fingers together, their vined rings clicking against each other.  “Dynastic considerations turned into something quite different.”

Harry watched as Magnolia redid her tie, and they walked back into the Common Room, no one bothering to ask them where they had gone given that they both wore vined rings.  They were above reproach.

Draco and Harry found Zabini two days later in the Common Room during a free period.  “Don’t ask us how,” Draco opened with, “but we have to make Ginny Weasley fall out of fancy with Jonathan Potter.”

Zabini snorted.  “Good luck with that one.  I can’t get her to look my way even when I’m directly in front of her.”

“We were thinking a love potion,” Harry suggested, taking a seat beside him.  “We’d feed it to her slowly at first, so not even Jonathan would suspect.  Then more and more.  We thought you might like it if she fell in love with you.”

Zabini’s eyes flashed open.  “How long would you keep this up?”

“I would finance it until I left Hogwarts.  I could then give you the name of my supplier after that.  You could install a house elf here who could douse her food.  I thought that’s how I’d do it.”  Draco’s eyes shone grey. 

“Who else knows about this?”

“Theodore Nott, Genevieve Selwyn—” Harry listed off.

“Magnolia Riddle, of course.”

“Of course,” Zabini agreed.

“And then Granger in Gryffindor who wanted the arrangement.  She knows we’re going to do something but not what.  She’s sweet on my brother, though why I have no idea.”

Zabini blinked.  “This high,” he asked, lifting up his hand to about five feet, three inches.  “Bushy hair, teeth like a beaver.”

“That’s the one,” Draco agreed.

“I’d fix her teeth as part of the arrangement,” Zabini suggested.

“How would we do that?” Harry wondered.

“Where there’s magic, there’s a way,” Draco placated.  He clapped Zabini on the shoulder.  “Do you approve of our plan?”

“More than,” he said eagerly.  “I only wish I had thought of it myself.  She was just so wrapped up in Potter, I thought there was no possibility.  I’m the Black Widow’s son.  I should be able to have any witch I want, but I could never get her.”

Harry wondered what Jonathan and Zabini saw in the Weaslette, but he didn’t ask. 

All they had left to do was get the love potion and get the house elf into Hogwarts.  Draco said his house elf Dobby would do it for him, and had him pose as a free elf, which was difficult since he was always ironing his ears. 

By March, however, Ginny had been given the first dose, which was obvious when she actually stopped and had a conversation with Zabini by the doors of the Great Hall.  By April she was stopping by his table in the Library, and in May Harry and Magnolia walked in Zabini and the Weaslette snogging behind a tapestry.

“He doesn’t wear a vined ring?” Magnolia asked in confusion as they left.

“He is the Black Widow’s son,” Harry suggested as he escorted her down the hallway.  “Maybe it’s not exactly a requirement.”

“Which one of her husbands is his father?  Does anyone actually know his blood status?”

Harry thought for a moment and realized he had no idea.  He doubted anyone else did either.

For Easter Hols, he was back at Riddle House with Magnolia.  By this time, Jonathan had his arm in a sling and Granger was hovering over him worriedly on the platform. 

“That seems to be going well,” Magnolia noted.

“More than well,” Harry agreed as he escorted her toward Lady Aloysia and Lord Malfoy.

“Whatever is going on with Jonathan Potter’s arm?” Lord Malfoy asked as they came up to them along with Draco and Lacerta Malfoy.  “Draco wrote to me of the continuing bad blood, but he is positively injured.”

“There’s only so much healing magic a body can incorporate,” Magnolia reminded her uncle, leaning up and kissing his cheek.  “I’m afraid that Jonathan Potter has been injured so badly that he must wait until more healing spells can be cast on him.”

Lord Malfoy shared a look with his younger sister before looking down the platform again.  “Who is that creature with them?”

“Our plant,” Draco Malfoy said gleefully.  “She’s a Muggleborn.”

“Indeed?” Lord Malfoy asked before turning back to them all.  “There’s a bit of a to do at Riddle House so you’re all coming back to Malfoy Manor for the night.—Magnolia, you’ll be home tomorrow or the next day.”

Harry had to keep himself from objecting.  He desperately wanted to see his mother who was decidedly not at Malfoy Manor.

“Ah,” Lord Malfoy commented.  “I see Auror Potter is coming over.”

James Potter was indeed coming over.  He looked over the assembled children and then turned to Lady Aloysia and Lord Malfoy.  “Has there been a change of plans?”

“Riddle House is undergoing renovations and they promised to be done by yesterday, but they’re a day or two behind,” Lady Aloysia apologized.  “There’s too much scaffolding.  I worry for Magnolia and Harrogate.  My brother has kindly offered to host us for a night at Malfoy Manor.”

James looked apprehensive, but asked Lady Aloysia, “Same rules apply?”

“Same rules apply,” she promised.

Harry had no idea what rules they were talking about.

James shook hands with Lord Malfoy, tussled Harry’s hair while wishing him a fun holiday, before returning to his wife and other children.

“Are we taking two cars?” Lacerta asked.

“Yes,” Lady Aloysia agreed.  “Same as if we were each going home.”  The trunks were then magicked to follow them and Harry was once again in the front seat of a car better suited to the 1930s.  Soon, he was on his way to Wiltshire and a manor with white peacocks in the garden.  He wondered what his mother would think.

“They must be planning a raid,” Magnolia guessed as she sprawled out on Draco Malfoy’s floor, Harry perched in a chair.  Draco was lounging on the bed.  “It wouldn’t be a problem except there seem to be rules regarding you, Harrogate.”

“Don’t ask me,” Harry said.  “I was unaware your father was the Dark Lord until I was practically at your house last Christmas.  It only makes sense that he and my father have rules.”

“You’re a Gaunt,” she exclaimed.

“Raised,” Draco pointed out, “by an Auror and a Mudblood.  Is Granger going home with Potter, do you think?”

“Looked like,” Harry agreed.  “We’ll get her to plant some device that makes him sick.”

Draco turned eagerly toward him.  “We could get something like that in Knockturn Alley.”

“Marvelous,” Magnolia agreed.  “Simply wonderful!  He’ll sicken, and no one will know why.  If they trace it back to anyone, they’ll trace it back to her!”

“Lily will be beside herself,” Harry stated.  “She’s always babied him.  He can do no wrong.”

Draco rolled his eyes.

Magnolia took this chance to sit up and look at Draco.  “Genevieve,” she prompted.

Harry looked up.  “Isn’t she a sixth year?”

“Yes,” Draco agreed carefully.  “Age means nothing in a wizarding marriage, however.  Look at Uncle Marvolo and Aunt Aloysia.  You can hardly tell the age difference and he’s technically old enough to be her father.”

Magnolia rolled her eyes.  “Putting my father and mother aside: is it serious?”

“Selwyns are Sacred Twenty-Eight,” Harry pointed out carefully.  “One of Mother’s closest friends was a Selwyn—Madam Apricot Crouch.  She sent me a photograph of them when they were students.”  And she had.  Just as Barty had promised, a photograph of his mother with another witch and two wizards had come by owl his first week back to Hogwarts.  His mother was beautiful with dishwater blonde hair and ocean blue eyes.  She couldn’t be more different from Lily Potter if she had tried.

“I was going to ask Father for permission over hols,” Draco carefully admitted.  “Who I go with at Hogwarts could potentially set the tone for my future marriage.”

“She is lovely,” Magnolia told him.  “You’re prefects together, right?  Is that how you met?”

“Yes,” Draco admitted carefully.  “She has more of a quiet personality.  She does not invite notice.”

“Do you think that the future Lady Malfoy should invite notice?” Harry asked perceptively.  “Because just by being Lady Malfoy, she will invite notice.  She does not need her personality to do that for her.  There is nothing wrong with subtlety.”

“Harrogate is subtle,” Magnolia observed, looking up at him adoringly.  “He’s more suited to the shadows.  He was constantly running from Potter instead of facing him outright in battle, which I take it frustrated Potter more than anything.”

“I think our current plan frustrates Potter more than anything,” Draco drawled.  “Hopefully we’ll get an update from Flint in the next few days.”

“You did tell him to stay away from Granger,” Magnolia checked.

Draco paused and then quickly went to his desk, taking out a piece of parchment.

“To be fair,” Harry told the cousins, “none of us knew she was going home with him.  We could hardly predict our success with feeding the Weaslette a love potion at such a slow rate.”

“She must have had some underlying attraction to Zabini,” Magnolia posited as Draco started writing his letter.  “It’s the only explanation.”

“Did she like my brother at all?” Harry wondered.  “After all, he is supposedly famous.  She could have simply been starstruck.”

At Malfoy Manor, the entire family ate with each other.  Harry got to observe Iolanthe who was now eleven years old and greatly resembled her mother, Narcissa, Lady Malfoy.  Lady Aloysia also stayed for the meal.

Afterwards, Harry was called into Lord Malfoy’s study.

Magnolia looked over at her uncle as she squeezed Harry’s hand in support before following Draco and Lacerta toward the family rooms.

Lord Malfoy’s study was well appointed, with light woods, and several windows overlooking the front garden.  There were several magical sketches of his three children in various states of play and repose, all moving within their frames.  Over the floo mantel was a portrait of a young woman who looked very much like the Malfoys, with the same platinum blonde hair but with violet eyes.

“Is she another sister?” Harry asked, looking up at her.

“She was my niece,” Lord Malfoy told him.  “Lux.  She was only five years younger than me.  She was my sister Madeleine’s child.  She died during the first swell of the war.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured.

“Not at all,” Lord Malfoy told him, inviting him to sit in a comfortable chair in front of his desk.  “Now, the rules that you heard mentioned state that I cannot ask you anything about the Ministry, the Aurors, or the Order of the Phoenix.”

“And in return my dad can’t ask about the Dark Lord or Death Eaters?” he guessed.

“Quite right,” Lord Malfoy agreed.  “I would simply like to know if you have ever been to your godfather’s childhood home.  Have you perhaps inherited it?”

“I don’t think he left me anything,” Harry admitted.  “I don’t know where he lived.”

“You don’t?” Lord Malfoy checked carefully.  “You have not, then, been to Twelve Grimmauld Place?”

Harry felt the blood run from his face.  “I thought Sirius was married,” he checked.  “Dad never said who his wife was.”

“Heiress Sirius was none other than Lux—” Lord Malfoy informed him, tilting his head back toward the portrait. 

Harry turned toward the portrait.  “But she’s a dark witch,” he stated carefully.

“She was a spy,” Lord Malfoy admitted delicately.  “She was very effective.  Your stepmother Lily never quite trusted her.  She was always calling into question Lux’s loyalties.  Lux, after all, was my niece.  She was a Kingsley.  She was great friends with the Black sisters whose parents were supporters of the Dark Lord.  She was friends with your mother, Lady Maia, though she was a couple of years ahead of her at Hogwarts.  Lux, though, was the wife of an Order member.  She was your godmother, Maia—and the Dark Lord—insisted on it.”

“What happened to her?”

“Well,” Lord Malfoy murmured, “she was living at Grimmauld Place with Sirius and his parents.  There was no love lost between Walburga Black and her son, but they were family.  Sirius went after Peter Pettigrew after he put your life in danger, and then the aurors tried to take him.”

“He died,” Harry whispered.

“He was killed,” Lord Malfoy agreed, “when they tried to take him into custody.—Lux and Sirius had a child.  She was a beautiful little witch named Imogen.  She performed magic in front of Muggles,” he said with derision.  “They threw rocks at her and smashed her skull open.”  He breathed in through his nose and had to visibly calm himself.  “Lux could not get there in time to save her life.  With her husband and child gone, she committed suicide.”  He paused and turned his ice blue eyes to Harry.  “By that time Sirius’s parents had passed on.  The house should have passed from Sirius to Imogen and then from Imogen, to her guardian and mother, Lux.  Or from Imogen it could have passed to her godsibling, you.—The house has been missing for over a decade, however.  Do you know anything about it?”

Harry breathed out carefully and looked over at the portrait of Lux.  “You are my godmother?” he asked the portrait.

“Yes,” she whispered.  “You and Imogen were godsiblings.  Maia and I wanted to bring you up together, like brother and sister.  I would visit her in her Tower at Riddle House.  Is she still there?”

“Yes,” Harry told her carefully.  “I write to her.”  He turned back to Lord Malfoy and saw that the older wizard was regarding him.

“I don’t know how this information is going to help you,” Harry told him, “but Twelve Grimmauld Place is the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix.”

Lord Malfoy’s face darkened.

“Dumbledore has it under Fidelius.  I can’t give you the secret even if I wanted to.”

Pressing his fist against his mouth, Lord Malfoy nodded.  “You’ve told me all I need to know.  I can proceed legally with this information.  Thank you, Harrogate.  We are proud to count you as a member of the Riddle-Malfoy family.”

“I’m a Gaunt,” Harry told him carefully.

“And what are the Riddles but Gaunts?” Lord Malfoy asked him rhetorically.  “My father and the Dark Lord were at school together.  They were the greatest of friends.  The Riddle family is as dear to the Malfoy family as our own line.”

Harry nodded.  Settling in himself, he thought of the enormity of what he had done.  He had just betrayed not only the Order of the Phoenix, but the Headmaster, his half-brother, his entire family, and most importantly his dad—but this was the world he had stepped into.